The Night of the Iguana (1964) ****

 

Based on a Tennessee Williams play, “The Night of the Iguana” tells the story of people at the ends of their ropes, coming together to help one another during one hot, fateful night in Mexico. We first meet the Reverend Dr. T. Lawrence Shannon (Richard Burton), a preacher who loses his post after a sexual indiscretion. We next find Shannon directing bargain basement tours of Mexico. His current tour group, mostly a bunch of lady schoolteachers from a Baptist college, is not going well. The ladies are beset with dysentery and sick of riding in a hot bus. Worse, the youngest member of the tour, 16-year-old Charlotte (Sue Lyon) has taken a fancy to the much older Shannon, and her chaperone does not approve of how much time Charlotte spends chatting Shannon up. Trying to do what is right and keep his job, Shannon repels Charlotte's advances as much as he can, but she is very persistent, and, well, every man has his limits. In Shannon's case, we know that he has reached his limit more than once.

Desperate, beset by his own moral failings, Shannon drags his poe-faced tour ladies to an out-of-the-way hotel that he knows. The owner, Maxine (Ava Gardner), reluctantly grants her old friend and his group lodging, and then is convinced to give a room to a broke artist (Deborah Kerr) and her poet grandfather. Through a sweltering day and night, this motley crew work through their issues as only characters in a play can.

There are definitely times when you recognize that this is a play brought to film. In fact, James Garner claimed that he was first offered the Shannon role but turned it down, because “it was just too Tennessee Williams for me.” The movie is much more dynamic than most play-to-film adaptations, however, and I would say that director John Huston mostly succeeds in turning this story into a movie. There are definitely times when Richard Burton, accustomed as he was to stage acting, overplays his role. The characters' soliloquies sometimes grow a bit long and literary as well. Mostly, though, the film is funny, poignant, and very human, with beautiful black-and-white camera work. Ava Gardner is an absolute revelation, beautiful and full of life. Her acting is so naturalistic that it helps smooth over some of Burton's over-acting.

“The Night of the Iguana” won an Oscar for costume design, and was nominated for several more. Despite its odd title, this is a classic that should not be forgotten, a funny, sexy, existentialist meditation on the interplay between desire, conscience, and repression. Watch it on a hot, humid night with a date and a couple of rum drinks.

4 stars out of 5